Making a selection
of "pieces" from any Wagner
opera, and especially from the Ring
operas, is a more or less impossible
task, especially if the purpose is to
give a good picture of the work as a
whole. The choice on this well-filled
disc is as good as any, and one has
to applaud the ambition to avoid "bleeding
chunks" and instead give us a few
longer sequences. The back-cover lists
eighteen tracks, but in reality there
are only six excerpts, and they could
have been reduced further. From the
Prologue we have the orchestral interlude,
known as "dawn", which separates
the first part of the prologue from
the concluding Brünnhilde – Siegfried
duet, starting with the words Zu
neuen Taten. Here they have excised
that first half and start with Brünnhilde’s
Willst du mir Minne schenken.
In an ideal world I would have liked
the duet to have been unbroken from
Dawn to the end of the Prologue. Then
we could have been saved the very blunt
end to the dawn music. I would think,
though, that most half-Wagnerians will
feel satisfied with the choice of items.
Full blood-Wagnerians will of course
need a complete recording. This review
is not for them.

What about the execution
of the music? Barenboim is one of the
leading Wagner conductors of our time,
having by now completed the recording
of the ten mature music-dramas. Solti
also did, but who else? Recording Wagner
at Bayreuth, in the Festspielhaus, has
great advantages. The famous acoustics
and the orchestra, not least. We do
get superb playing, it is well balanced,
thanks to producer John Mordler and
his team as well as the Festspielhaus
itself. The brass is impressive in the
dawn music and the strings so silken
in the final scene. Barenboim’s tempos
are so right. I haven’t heard the complete
recording so I don’t know how the performance
hangs together but the individual items
are beyond reproach. There are some
stage noises, but they don’t distract
much from the music.

The conductor, it is
often said, is the most important participant
in an opera performance, less so, though,
in a highlights disc like this. Most
people will judge it on the merit of
the singers. They are good, no doubt,
and no one is likely to feel short-changed
if he/she buys it. Siegfried Jerusalem
in 1992 still retained a lot of his
basically lyrical voice, his declamation
is keen, but there is also a harsh quality
to the voice, the result, no doubt,
of a natural Lohengrin and Walther singing
too many Tristans and Siegfrieds. It
is a powerful voice, which has expanded
since he first appeared in the late
1970s. In the death scene he also scales
it down to good effect, singing with
real feeling.

His Brünnhilde
is Anne Evans, and she has to be rated
as one of the best of latter day Walküres.
Her voice is big and mezzo-ish and it
has considerable warmth. It is not dissimilar
to her sister’s, Waltraute’s, voice,
at least when, as here, she is sung
by Waltraud Meier, who turns in a good
interpretation of her act I narration.

Of the lower male voices
we don’t hear much, but from the little
we hear we can conclude that Philip
Kang (please, Warner, his name is Kang,
not King as stated on the back cover
and in the booklet!) has a big voice
which can sound menacing. Bodo Brinkmann’s
Gunther is manly and incisive but not
very subtle. Günther von Kannen’s
Alberich is completely absent from this
disc, although his name is on the cover.
It seems that someone at Warner didn’t
listen too carefully to the finished
product. The booklet has a synopsis,
"The Story", but no references
as to what is actually to be heard on
the disc.

I will definitely return
to this disc, for the wonderful playing
of the orchestra, for the intensity
and, in the death scene, for the poetry
of Jerusalem and for Evans’ warmth.
I still think Windgassen and Nilsson,
for both Böhm and Solti, recorded
in the distant 1960s, are preferable;
even further back in history Flagstad’s
Immolation scene with Furtwängler
is unforgettable. True Wagnerians will
need several recordings to be satisfied,
but they stopped reading this after
the first paragraph.

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